The sighting brain her good decree Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, By reason hourly fed, that she, To some the clod, to some the wraith, Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. Flame, stream, are we, in mid career From torrent source, delirious dream, To heaven-reflecting currents clear. And why the sons of Strength have been Her cherished offspring ever; how The Spirit served by her is seen Through Law; perusing love will show. Love born of knowledge, love that gains Vitality as Earth it mates, The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, The Life, the Death, illuminates. For love we Earth, then serve we all; Her mystic secret then is ours: We fall, or view our treasures fall, Unclouded, as beholds her flowers Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning’s mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire. THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER I DEMETER devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter snatched below. Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer’s ray. Now whether night advancing, whether day, Scarce did the baldness show: The hand of man was a defeated hand. II Necessity, the primal goad to growth, Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth. III Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please. A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags. IV No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, And whose pale place of habitation mute, She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit Anciently, gaped for bloom: Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl’s claw. V The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone. More than for her who grieved, She could for this waste home have piped the wail. VI